“Cultural Maintenance and Change: Currents in Art and Technology” presented by Jones
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Networking the Globe
Presentation Title:
- Cultural Maintenance and Change: Currents in Art and Technology
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
Martin Heidegger has stated that “technology is… no mere means. Technology is a way of revealing. If we give heed to this, then another whole realm of the essence of technology will open itself to us. It is the realm of revealing, i.e., of truth… There was a time when it was not technology alone that bore the name techne …. Once there was a time when the bringing forth (poieses) of the true (aletheia) into the beautiful was called techne. And the poieses of the fine arts was also called techne.”
Viewing cultural maintenance and change as interactive and concurrent, this paper address-es areas of knowledge and belief in which computer graphics and other electronic art and information such as computer graphics may reveal or bring forth a new view of truth. As Heidegger states, “It is in revealing, and not as manufacturing or making that techne is a bringing forth… Technology is a mode of revealing. Technology comes to presence in the realm where revealing and unconcealment take place, where aletheia, truth, happens.”
The limits of current belief systems within and across cultures are illuminated as new ways of representing and communicating visual information emerge from electronic media. The dominance of prior American and European representational schemes in electronic media is examined with the view that these media may also generate new representation schemes that illuminate the limits of current Euro-American thought. Art and technology are viewed as cultural information bearers with potential to effect cultural maintenance and change. Specific examples of electronic art will be examined as maintaining artistic schools of thought and as revealing the limits of contemporary art theory and practice. Discussions of the boundaries of art in contemporary Euro-American theory will be used to examine a variety of current and past work in electronic media.
